News

Good food, candlelight, wine and conversation after a long week is the quintessential (hoped-for) weekend plan, whether it’s for a night out, or — as it is for many Jews — for a Friday-night dinner. But for married couples that host weekly Shabbat dinners, each Friday night also represents an opportunity to help singles who might otherwise go unfed physically, spiritually or romantically.

Half a world away from her home, a bronchitis-stricken American writer stumbles into her cousins’ apartment in Jerusalem to recuperate in the embrace of her Israeli family. Technically a guest, she feels more like a patient, but in this moment, certainly not a singles columnist. She sits in the kitchen, drinking tea, which is pretty much all her beleaguered throat can handle right now. And as the veil of Hebrew pulls back and her ear adjusts to the language, she slowly becomes aware of some oddly familiar phrases.

All those Sunday press conferences must be paying off. Sen. Charles Schumer, the Brooklyn Democrat who became a statewide official in 1998 with his upset of Republican Al D'Amato, is emerging as one of the most popular figures in the Empire State, according to the latest poll from Marist College.
The survey of 912 voters found that Schumer would beat Gov. George Pataki either in a 2004 contest for Schumer's Senate seat (55-39 percent) or in a gubernatorial matchup (50-43 percent).

In a move widely seen as a victory for the centrist element of Modern Orthodoxy, and despite rabbinic opposition, Richard Joel, 52, was elected president of Yeshiva University late Thursday night, Dec. 5. In the spring he will succeed Dr. Norman Lamm, who has led the flagship institution of the movement since 1976.

U.S. officials are condemning as “discriminatory” a draft bill by Poland’s parliament that would block Holocaust survivors from reclaiming billions of dollars in private property confiscated by the Nazis and Communists 50 years ago.
The proposed legislation by Poland’s Sejm, or lower house of parliament, would restrict property claims to Polish citizens who have lived in the country for the last five years — effectively barring claims from Jewish and non-Jewish Polish survivors, or their heirs, now living in America or elsewhere.

Six months after the shooting stopped, Israel’s less than fully successful war in Lebanon continues to have diplomatic repercussions.
This week the State Department sent Congress a report saying that Israel “may have” violated restrictions placed on the use of cluster bombs during the war.